European RC #3

I read this book for the European Reading Challenge 2015.

Tito: The Man Who Defied Hitler and Stalin a.k.a. The Heretic: The Life and Times of Josip Broz-Tito – Fitzroy Maclean

The author of this biography and his subject worked together in Yugoslavia for nearly two years during World War II. On the Adriatic island of Vis or in the Yugoslav interior, Maclean was head of the British mission to Tito and the partisans who were battling both Nazi occupation troops and non-communist forces composed of Croats (the Ustaše) or Serbs (the Chetniks). Maclean also acted as a go-between in a meeting between the Yugoslav leader and PM Winston Churchill in Naples in August 1944.

Obviously in two years of close proximity, Maclean was able to converse with Tito at length. Like Edgar Snow gathered material from Mao Tse-tung for Red Star over China, Maclean collected much interesting early life information and stories about the “illegal” life of a Communist conspirator-activist between the wars. He was also able to observe Tito and his comrades as it gradually dawned on them that supreme power was within their grasp. This book was the first study of the partisan war in Yugoslavia so it’s well worth reading for readers interested in how a socialist insurgency could take over a country with limited aid from either bloc.

Maclean, an anti-Communist, gives an objective analysis on how Tito and his people stifled dissent, nationalized industry, persecuted religious people, and forced peasants onto collective farms. Maclean relates the powerful story of the harassment, trial, and imprisonment of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac, who angered Tito with the public complaints that "273 clergymen had been killed" since the Partisan take-over, "169 had been imprisoned", and another "89 were missing and presumed dead.”

He also treats objectively two other example of Balkan ambiguity: Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović and Milovan Djilas. Mihailović was a Serb, royalist general whose career during WWII was admirable on one hand but appalling on the other. He was the first to organize bands of Chetniks to resist Nazi occupation, but later many Chetnik groups collaborated or established a modus vivendi with the Axis powers. Milovan Djilas was a Partisan hero who later fell out with Tito because of Djilas’ dissident writings. Djilas could be seen as national romantic, patriot, or naïve idealist. If nothing else, this book will give a sense of the thorny questions and impossible choices Europeans had to face in the 20^th century.

Maclean tells an unreal story about the surreal court of Stalin – the ghoul Molotov and the goblin Mikoyan and killer Beria partying all night long in drunken banquets at Stalin’s dacha; the cruel bullying and the fear Stalin promoted among his henchmen. Stalin acted senile and gluttonous, indulging in foul jokes and inane drinking games and humiliating dancing. It makes one wonder if he had a medical problem that was affecting his brain.

Maclean also explains clearly the events leading up to Tito’s expulsion from the Soviet bloc in 1948. It reminded me how little regard the Stalinists had for the truth when they were claiming disloyalty and deviationism. Tito turned to the West again and even landed some Marshall Plan aid from the US. Maclean again acted as a go-between.

I highly recommend this book for those into Balkan and Communist topics, Stalinism, and guerilla war. By the way, Maclean’s autobiographical Eastern Approaches (1949) is fun to read. It covers his life as a junior diplomat in Moscow in the Thirties and the show trials; his travels in the Soviet Union and forbidden zones of Central Asia; his adventures in the British Army and SAS in the North Africa theatre of war; and of course his time with Tito and the Partisans in Yugoslavia.

Cloak & Dagger #3

I read this for the 2015 Cloak and Dagger Mystery Reading Challenge

The Case of the Gold-digger's Purse - Erie Stanley Gardner, 1945

When Perry Mason’s confidential secretary, Della Street, peeks inside a red-headed gold-digger’s purse, she spies a roll of bills big enough to gag a mastiff – and the gun that killed businessman-heel Harrington Faulkner.

Mason and Della don’t feel it proper or opportune to burden the police with their knowledge. Then – too late – it dawns on them that Della’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon. The police regard the gold-digging ingenue and Mason and Della with the most profound suspicion.

Turns out that in order to raise funds her tubercular boyfriend needs for a sanitarium stay, the gorgeous but loyal gold-digger figures on separating the businessman-heel from a little of his dough. She offers the heel her BF’s cure for the heel’s sickly goldfish. Proving nobody is completely bad, the poor fishies with ick are the only creatures for which the heel has any human feelings. However, her plan goes ahoo when the fish vanish and Faulkner ends up shot to death still with shaving lather on his face.

Thus, Mason has to solve multiple disappearances: rare goldfish called Veiltail Moor Telescopes  a.k.a. “the Fish of Death,” a secret formula of an new ick remedy, a vanished bullet, and the real murderer.

In rating this 1956 mystery, the 26th Mason novel, I can give only a qualified thumbs-up. On the positive side, we readers enjoy the retro names (Adele, Genevieve, Elmer, tail-rot for ick) and retro artifacts (straight razors, fountain pens, cars with finicky chokes). The nemesis Lt. Tragg proves himself the worthy opponent. Gardner gets across points about the fallibility of the police and their unwitting misconstrual of evidence when they think they know who the perp is. In the last scene, Perry and Della do a victory waltz at a dance hall. Letting her guard slip, she calls him “darling.”

On the down side, Gardner spends time on characterization, a literary nicety he usually – wisely - subordinates to plot, a rapid pace, and a surprise solution. The result is a problem: we are given enough information on both victim and gold-digger that we readers detest both of them. The gold-digger – the little minx - gives Perry a mere perfunctory “thank you” for saving her life and the BF’s freedom. 

Gardner also complicates matters to the point where the red herrings start to smell bad. Plus, Gardner doesn't give us readers a fair chance to solve it before Perry reveals all.  A vital clue is given about five pages before the ending. Grrrr.

Mount TBR #2

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2015. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Epitaph for a Lobbyist – R. B. Dominic, 1974

An indiscreet memo leaked to the papers by her own daughter implicates Shirley Knapp, lobbyist for energy and oil companies, in a possible case of bribery. The vote to kill a pollution control provision in a new law cost $50,000 in 1974, which would be about $235,000 in today’s purchasing power. Series hero Congressman Ben Safford (D, OH) is named chair of the committee to investigate the charge of bribery.

When Shirley Knapp is found shot to death in her car, Ben leads his committee members as they formally and investigate the bribery, which they assume is linked to Knapp’s murder. Val Oakes and Lou Flecker are canny veterans of politics, both conservative, though in different parties. Elsie Hollenbach is a California liberal, moralistic but politically adept. Tony Martinelli is machine Democrat from RI, practical and realistic. Their conversations are intelligent and believable.

Suspicion falls on the three congressmen that voted to kill the proviso. Although this really limits the number of suspects, I didn’t see whodunit until the reveal. The fair play really is amazing. We are indeed given all we need to know. The reveal proves that we missed the obvious as do our hero congress members. It is often the case that the really sophisticated can be in the end very simple.

The authors of this book were Mary Jane Latsis, an economist, and Martha Henissart, an economic analyst. Both knew from their professional experience that astute people will in fact get distracted and miss what is staring them in the face. They know how people at all levels think and act in business and government. Obviously specific issues are dated (as is the non-partisan respect the politicians have for each other), but classic are the treatments of how people with agile minds and deep experience deal with novel situations. That timelessness is what makes these R.B. Dominic novels – there are seven --worth reading still.

These authors also wrote a couple dozen business mysteries under the pen name of Emma Lathen. Perhaps to distinguish the style of R. B. Dominic, they use the mildly annoying wont of always modifying a verb meaning “say” with an adverb or adverbial phrase: “said reminiscently” or “roared in anger.” Also, people don’t just say things they “mutter,” “interject,” “murmur,” “bleat” and so on. It’s a habit we expect from a whodunnit writer of the 1920s.

Classic #3

I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015.

The First Men in the Moon – H.G. Wells

The narrator Bedford is an anti-hero. Because of business reverses that lead to bankruptcy, he over-confidently takes to writing plays as a way to get out from under his creditors. Needless to say, he finds writing tedious and more difficult than he expected. In his boredom and frustration while living on the windy Downs, he finds himself easily distracted by his neighbor Cavor’s daily walks.

Bedford can’t stand Cavor’s habit of buzzing as Cavor thinks and walks, hardly a mannerism that is so irritating, but it shows what a jerk Bedford is. Bedford and Cavor talk. It comes out that Cavor has invented a metal that conquers  gravity called Cavorite.  Cavor is focused on the science and technology of his invention, not its uses. Bedford, however, is struck by the obvious applications of Cavorite: “My first natural impulse was to apply this principle to guns and ironclads, and all the material and methods of war, and from that to shipping, locomotion, building, every conceivable form of human industry.”

Bedford the main chancer and Cavor the educated fool voyage to the Moon. Wells’ description of flight in the sphere made me gasp, it was that vibrant. Once they arrive on the Moon, they have adventures that are totally consistent with their characters. Cavor wants to study the environment and the inhabitants, the Selenites. But rash Bedford ends up slaughtering a passle of the delicate insect-like creatures. Our mismatched pair end up separating. Bedford, claiming that he assumed Cavor was killed, deserts and returns Earthside with some gold he has appropriated.

After a year, the newly rich Bedford finds out that Cavor has set up a wireless communication and tells of his adventures the “ruthlessly rational” dystopia the leaders of the Selenites have established. In his messages, Cavor lets slip to the Selenites the war-like nature of Earthers, which gives Wells a chance to beat the anti-war drum. Alarmed, the Selenites silence him, probably permanently since the messages stop.

Overall this novel has everything I like to see in a science fiction novel: new technology, off world exploration, and contact with aliens and their weird culture. But its social commentary reminded me of the Iain Banks in Use of Weapons, the only one of Banks I’ve had the stones to read. For both writers, people – when they are not burnt-out or in the slough of despair -- are greedy, cowardly, and disloyal and inter-cultural contact will always call to mind Spaniards versus Incas.

Cloak & Dagger RC #2

I read this for the 2015 Cloak and Dagger Mystery Reading Challenge

Kill Now, Pay Later – Robert Terrall

Written in 1960, this is very much a guy’s PI mystery, given the drinking, hard-boiled dialogue and young women throwing themselves at the series hero Ben Gates. He is sent by an insurance company to guard the wedding presents at the swanky nuptials hosted by the president of a big pharma firm. Problem is, somebody drugs Ben’s coffee. He wakes up to find that his fellow PI has killed a robber who scared the matron of the house so badly that she dropped dead of a heart attack. Although nothing has gone missing, Gates’ professional reputation and livelihood are on the line.

The cops mock Gates’ claim about the drugged coffee. So he gets the rich papa as a client and starts an investigation into who was the insider that aided the robber. The story moves along at a brisk pace, with sometimes little breathers to give seductresses and hussies a try at handsome Gates. Buttons pop. Arms are extended. Duds are doffed. Also featured is standard material on the greed and amorality of the rich. One can tell hard-boiled pulpy stories originated in the anti-rich days of the Great Depression – and so did authors born in the Twenties whose families were adversely affected by the economic slump.

This private eye tale was reissued in 2007 by the publisher Hard Case Crime. Their mode of operation seems to be to choose the better or best of Fifties and Sixties writers such as Day Keene and Charles Williams. These books have first-person narration, hard-boiled dialogue, surprising twists, fast pacing, a minimum of violence, scantily-clad women, and rocking finales. Not great, not especially memorable, but enjoyable.